Roll With The Changes

Morning earworm: I'll Find My Way, the Derek Trucks Band. Bit of a mood shift, but still cool.



A rough day yesterday all around. Woke up feeling like total crap - nose running like a faucet, pounding headache, long brutal sneezing fits. Ugh. Always on a gig night, too. My first thought is ginger tea, but we have no ginger. Lemon-honey tea, then. No lemons, either. I had already loaded the van and hooked up the trailer, so I wasn't going to the store. We have limes, so let's see how lime-honey tea works. I don't recommend it - kind of like a hot margarita. Still, the vitamin C was there. Finally, in a fit of desperation, a half-shot of NyQuil before an extended nap. Some combination of all of these things worked, and I was feeling almost human by the time I arrived at the gig.

The challenges remained, though, spending much of the night wrestling with dead batteries and broken strings. These were met with surprising aplomb, considering that it is not something I often have to endure, thanks to regular gear maintenance. Well, that and it's been a long time since I've used anything that took batteries - I see a power supply in my near future.

Back in the day, as a young gigster, these sort of pitfalls were commonplace; you learn to deal with them and move on. Swapping out dead pedals in mid-song was just another job skill you developed, as was finishing the set on five strings. Or so I thought. Apparently nobody else in the band has ever seen this, and was totally gobsmacked that I did the last three songs of the night without a B string. It is a bit tricky, but as I mentioned yesterday, you just have to turn of the auto-pilot. All of the notes are still there, they just aren't where you are used to them being, so you have to pay attention to what you're doing. Some people even do stuff like this on purpose, just to keep themselves fresh - drummer Bill Bruford used to have his roadie set his kit up differently very night, to avoid getting into a habit / rut. I'll admit that's a bit extreme, but it doesn't hurt to be prepared for the curve ball that is inevitably going to come your way :D

The highest quality of attention we may give is love.